


well it's two of us (against the nightmares)

by Teahound



Series: a garden of thorns (Dream SMP one-shots) [4]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Explosion, Fireworks, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I don't remember the last time I wrote Tubbo's POV but man this hurt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Temporary Character Death, Tubbo remembers the festival, brief but fairly graphic descriptions of death, this kid needs a break, tuboo sees tommy again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28482060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teahound/pseuds/Teahound
Summary: Tubbo wakes up screaming, fireworks going off behind his eyes.Tubbo thought his best friend was dead.Tubbo is alone.(Tubbo finds out that Tommy is alive, and somehow that hurts more)
Relationships: Tubbo & Tommyinnit
Series: a garden of thorns (Dream SMP one-shots) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058096
Comments: 8
Kudos: 178
Collections: Dsmp fic recs :), Sadge





	1. sleepless nights and scars

**Author's Note:**

> I'm taking a hiatus, I said. I lied, writing angst is my coping mechanism clearly. 
> 
> Happy 2021, I'm celebrating by talking about Tubbo's PTSD, and how his former best friend has teamed up with the man who killed him.

Tubbo wakes up screaming, hands reaching up to shield his face.

He doesn’t remember the first time he died. Tommy does though, and it was Tubbo’s job, in those long summer days after the Revolution ended, when his friend woke up shivering, to remind him that he was safe, that the war was over, that the final control room was nothing but an abandoned hole in the ground now with a few empty chests. 

Tommy has a twisted white scar on his back, from where Dream ran him through while the boy lay on the obsidian floor, scrabbling frantically to get back on his feet and _run_. But Tubbo doesn’t remember it. When he woke up from nightmares that summer it was nightmares about that split second he saw Tommy falling backward into the water, an arrow emerging from his throat. 

There is a scar on Tommy’s throat too. 

Tubbo hates looking at it. 

Tubbo wakes up screaming, and he’s shaking like a leaf. 

He doesn’t remember the first time he died. His brain must have decided the memory was _too much_ and it floated away, leaving him nothing but a white line on his stomach from where, according to Fundy (Fundy, who lived longest, who had to watch the rest of them die first) Sapnap had gotten him. He’s got other scars too, from explosions and fistfights and arrows, and from that one time Schlatt had slashed him with a bit of bottle-glass, but they’ve already begun to fade. When you die, though, the scar sticks.

Tubbo wakes up screaming because he remembers the second time he died. 

Ranboo is shaking him awake. That used to be Tommy’s job. After the festival, Tommy took his turn, dragging him out of that unconscious haze, hands careful around the bandages. _I’ll make it as painless and colorful as possible._ What a joke that had been. Tubbo remembers every spark, every second of it as the fireworks tore him to bits. He remembers and remembers and remembers, over and over again. 

Tubbo wakes up screaming and Ranboo is there trying to calm him and there are scars on his hands from where he tried to somehow stop a rocket, and scars on his face from where he failed. 

Ranboo is shaking him awake because something is wrong. 

He grabs a sweater off a pile of clothes draped across a nearby chair (no time, he’ll have to be a president without the armor that is a suit and tie) and runs out of the room.

There is no Quackity, no Fundy tonight. He leaves them in their beds. (Fundy laughed and jeered at his execution. Quackity taught him how to tie a Windsor knot, and a month later helped Schlatt build him a cage. Maybe in the end they were all on the same side, but they’re still in the nightmare). 

The air is cold, winter biting at his nose and they round a corner. 

Tubbo wakes up screaming and he’s alone. Because his best friend, who used to sit with him in those early morning hours when the nights were too much, and the pain was too much, and the fear was too much, is gone. And it’s his fault. 

And Tubbo is awake, and he wants to scream because here is the man of the nightmare himself, red eyes and pink hair and a pickaxe (Quackity has a new scar now, running up one side of his mouth and across his cheek) over his shoulder. 

And here is his best friend, and he is not what Tubbo remembers. There is the same scar on his throat, but a blue cloak embroidered in white thread and his hair has grown out, long and shaggy, and tied up in a way Tubbo doesn’t recognize. 

_“How?”_

The eyes. It’s the eyes that are the worst part because it’s like they’ve got scars too. Not ones just anyone can see, but Tubbo---who knows Tommy’s scars and Tommy’s nightmares as well as his own--- Tubbo feels like he’s gained something and lost something all at the same time. 

He takes a step back. 

“Hello, Tubbo.” 

Same voice. Technoblade is saying something, and his words are pounding against Tubbo’s brain like fireworks, but he doesn’t hear them. Because that’s _Tommy’s voice._

“Remember when you exiled me?” 

“I thought you’d died.” 

Tubbo inches closer and oh, that hurts because his best friend startles back and hides halfway behind the Blade. 

Tubbo is awake and he wishes he could scream because this feels worse than being torn apart by rockets. 

This is: 

“You didn’t even come and visit me once after I was exiled.” 

And “You monster! What the hell is wrong with you?” 

And it’s the confusion and horror on Tommy’s face while he takes three steps back, and Tubbo wonders what he’s seeing, and he wonders if it’s horns.

And it’s “stop lying! Stop, I don’t want to hear it anymore.” 

And it’s Technoblade yelling, “let’s get out of here Tommy!” and Tommy going with him, laughing, and turning back suddenly quiet, and his eyes are so different, and Tubbo reaching out, halfway waving goodbye and halfway pleading _come back, come back, come back._

And it’s Tommy, going, gone. 

He feels like he’s been blown to bits, but this time there is no one to avenge him. 

After Technoblade killed him, (while Tubbo clawed at the walls of his tiny box and watched sparks dancing at the end of the firework’s fuse) Tommy had been so angry. He’d screamed and shouted and swore he’d never forgive the hybrid for murdering his best friend. And that night, when Tubbo had laid awake, with burns on his face and his arms and his chest and explosions behind his eyes, Tommy had hugged and held him gently (as gently Tommy was capable of) and had promised it would never happen again.

They both knew it was a promise Tommy couldn’t keep. In the end, it hadn’t stopped Techno that awful November afternoon. 

Tubbo hears explosions when he falls asleep, but he also hears Tommy scream his name, and he wakes up trying to answer him. 

But Tommy is gone. 

Somehow, it’s like he’s lost him more completely than Tubbo could have ever imagined. 

Well, Technoblade has his crossbow back. Tubbo held it in his hands and passed it over, and saw fireworks, and wondered if the next time he sees that weapon it will be the last time. Part of him thinks it will be. 

He wonders if Tommy will care. 

Tubbo goes back to bed. 

He doesn’t sleep. He lays awake and he traces out the bumpy lines and ridges of scars across his chest and his face and his arms, and he thinks about how fireworks are banned in L’manburg, and how Phil is gone, and how long Tommy’s hair has gotten, and about a shattered bit of metal and glass that used to be a compass, and about how angry Tommy’s eyes are, and about a rocket launcher now strapped to the back of a man with a crown, and about how much he wants his best friend back. 

Tubbo lays awake, and he cannot scream, because it’s all trapped inside his chest, and he feels like he’s exploding from the inside. And there is no best friend to come and wake him up. 


	2. if there's no dawn we live by starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clingyduo is back together! Can I make it angsty? Tune in to find out!

Ghostbur’s voice is a soft husk of Wilbur’s. It screams melancholy out into the ash, the words of a half-remembered anthem echoing against the broken stone. There’s no triumph left in the singing. It sounds like a funeral dirge. **  
**

Tommy thinks that he’s heard this song sung as a wish for things lost far more than a victory of things gained. Maybe, that’s what L’manburg is really about. It’s something that you’ve already let slip away, a moment already claimed by the flames. Maybe that’s what Eret meant when he told them this was never meant to be.

“Tubbo,” he says hoarsely, “we’ve got to end this soon.”

Tubbo knows what that means. 

The taller boy learns up against him, and Tubbo hears his voice break and shatter against the words of the chorus. They feel one another shiver with each new detonation. 

This sound, the music of destruction, is so familiar. They hear it ringing in their ears when they sleep, and, well, today feels like a continuation of an old nightmare. Below their feet, home crumbles lost beyond repair. It hurts to even think it, but Tubbo knows it’s true, just like he knows what Tommy means when he says things must end. 

“ _Tubbo_ ,” Tommy whispers, his voice drifting above Ghostbur’s singing, above the explosions. “I am so, _so_ sorry.”

There’s this new distance between them, a wall of angry words, and terrible choices, and regrets, and betrayal, and months apart. It’s like they nearly don’t know each other anymore. But Tubbo wraps his arms around his best friend– _his Tommy_ , isn’t that what the compass said?– and says “it’s okay.” 

Is it strange that he suddenly feels peace, even as they cry out the final chorus of an anthem for a country that doesn’t exist any longer? 

**********

They leave the wreckage behind, but somehow the sense of peace sticks. 

Tubbo spends mornings in Snowchester, and afternoons with Tommy in the little base they’ve carved out, or vice versa.

He watches Tommy stare out across a frozen sea, eyes dark, and listens as he says _we need to get those disks back._

He thinks he understands the disks a little better now. They’re a promise, a hope, a prayer. Sometimes we win. Please let us win. Just this once, Dream can’t have everything from us. He’s already taken too much. He’s taken our quiet nights, without nightmares coming to wake us. He’s taken our innocence, our homes, our lives. 

Let there just be one thing he can’t have. 

_We need to get the disks or die trying._

Yes, Tubbo understands what Tommy is saying, and he accepts it, sallows it alongside the ash in his throat. 

_It starts with just me and you and it will probably end with just me and you, too._

_You know if we die we’re gone forever?_ he asks. But Tommy knows. And Tubbo knows. 

They are not made to live long and peaceful lives. Part of that was Wilbur, and the decision he made when he picked up the sword for L’manburg. Part of that is just Tommy. He’s got fighting fire in his blood, Tubbo thinks. They’re different that way; Tubbo has clung to those few stable things life has offered him, while Tommy can’t rest. 

Once upon a time, Tubbo thought his best friend was dead, and he’d lived waking up each morning, or more often, late in the night, thinking T _ommy is gone._ Gone where I can’t reach him.

He’s never letting that happen again. Wherever Tommy goes, even to death itself, Tubbo will follow this time. 

How much time do they have left? Is it this week? This month? Another summer together? 

Why does he feel nothing but a peaceful resignation? 

Tubbo treasures up moments like gemstones. Hot chocolate in Snowchester, sitting on the wooden steps next to Tommy. Afternoons spent building, and bickering and teasing. 

They fall asleep on opposite sides of the room, and inevitably wake up beside one another. Sometimes it’s an accident. Mostly it’s nightmares. 

After the war, the first war, Tommy used to wake up screaming and cursing, shaken and angry. Now, it’s quiet tears.His best friend cries in his sleep, and Tubbo wonders what happened in exile, and he’s pretty sure it’s his fault. He shakes Tommy awake, and feels his friend startle at the touch. 

_It’s okay, you’re awake, I’m here._

_I missed you._ Tommy traces the shape of the scars on Tubbo’s hand. 

_I missed you too._

********

If they have learned anything, it’s that you can’t take back words. There are never enough _sorrys_ to cover what you said. 

It’s why Tommy dropped his sword and said _give him the disk._

It’s why Tubbo sprinted through the rubble to throw himself in front of the rocket Technoblade meant for Tommy. 

It’s why they hold one another closer than before and try a little harder to make one another laugh. 

Tommy’s laughter is precious. Tubbo holds it as close as the memories that he’s storing up of all the good moments. 

************

 _I’m sorry._ Tommy says. Sorry it’s gone, sorry for what I did, sorry this happened.

 _It’s okay,_ Tubbo whispers back. It’s okay, we can let it go. It’s okay, I forgive you. It’s okay, we’re going to be fine. 

*********

 _In the end, it’s you and me._ Tommy has said it a hundred times, and he means it. They’re together. And they’re going to stay together. Even as they face down the people who bruised and burned them and pulled them apart, they’re together. 

It’s not much. Not much, and it’s so fragile, they’ve learned that now. 

Tubbo thinks the end is coming.

And he holds Tommy’s hand when they both have bad dreams, and holds every moment close, and clings to the quiet, tentative peace that belongs to two best friends who have nothing left to lose but one another. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was heavily inspired by this fanart by Winter-Mornings--- Check it out!!!  
> https://winter-mornings.tumblr.com/post/637512886474997760/we-cant-have-another-war
> 
> I also drew this moment: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/tea-with-veth/638951498981703680
> 
> You know, the last thing he heard Tommy say before this moment was literally "you're my best friend"


End file.
